


Just an Ordinary Man

by Dawnwind



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e13 Wait and Hope, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:48:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: Debriefing Malcolm style and singing showtunes with Gil.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo/Malcolm Bright
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Just an Ordinary Man

Just an Ordinary Man  
By Dawnwind

Malcolm had to admit this had not been one of his best plans. He tended to leap before he considered any alternatives—not that there had been a single viable one in this instance—and had never had much consideration for self-preservation.

Yet he’d survived. As he always had, which was the point wasn’t it? Difficult to refute that. Even his most stringent critics could not ignore his amazing—some might say undeserved--ability to bounce back from the brink of disaster.

Not that he felt like bouncing currently. Every single molecule in his body hurt with an intensity he hadn’t quite bargained on. Which was not to say that he’d bargained on anything except life. Launching himself out a window to crash down on the roof of Gil’s classic ’66 Pontiac LeMans had seemed the logical option in comparison to being blown up by a Russian landmine.

And he’d reveled in that knowledge, jumping off the car moments later in the pursuit of a killer, his own private narcotic. He’d been high as a kite, joyous, when Dani raced him over to his loft for a quick change of clothes before joining the team at the police department. Hadn’t taken a moment to check for bruising or residual injuries after his fall. 

The ice cream suit would be banished, discreetly donated to the Goodwill unbeknownst to his mother. He felt far more—normal was definitely not a word his closest friends would bestow upon him—but at least he felt like his favorite persona: Malcolm Bright, profiler. If that man bore a striking resemblance to the son of the infamous serial killer The Surgeon, there was nothing Malcolm could do about it at this juncture.

Others might have termed the last forty-eight hours as hellish, but for him, the exhilaration had been palpable. That rush of adrenaline uncovering each connection to the original murder, concluding with a successful arrest in barely two days, was the stuff of legend. The NYPD at its finest. Gil Arroyo’s team on a roll.

Slumped on his bed, Malcolm stared at the tremble in his right hand, wearily trying to decide if he should eschew disrobing for one night—not like it was the first time by any means—and sleep hunched over in pain like an arthritic elderly man. He managed to unbutton his shirt left-handed, one tedious tiny button at a time.

Landing full force on top of a car hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. He’d simply disregarded the pain and bruises in the thrill of the chase. Repressing his own physical needs was-- a line from his mother’s favorite musical, _My Fair Lady_ , swam to the front of his always crowded memory banks, _“second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in…”_

Yep. That described him to a T. Not so much a masochist as a master at overlooking his own needs while crashing headlong into the most dangerous and violent situations. All in a vain effort to repel the past that haunted him.

 _When your father was a serial murderer, all else took a back seat._

He’d blissed out on the investigation like a junkie on a bender. So much better than a lazy vacation on the beach, left alone with his morbid, dysfunctional thoughts.  
Working in collaboration with Gil, JT, and Dani was his happy place, his safe space—such as it was. Not really very safe, all things considered. But the idea of leaving them for solitary reflection sipping a Mai Tai? No fucking way. 

In all honesty, he’d never been a beach kind of guy. That was his mother’s attempt to corral him into some kind of normalcy.

Weird that his knowledge of The Count of Monte Cristo had been useful on this case. Not to mention his prowess at ax-throwing (and catching). As if the whole thing was bespoke for him. A chilling thought best left unparsed. 

Finding Voight tied up in the sword of Damocles contraption should have clued him immediately that the murderer was too clever to be one of the Taylors. He’d been so caught up in the marvelousness of the game to focus on anything but the immediate. 

Directing JT and Dani to snip the wires suspending the swords aimed directly at Voight, and snatching the weapons in mid-air had released endorphins like nothing ever before. Maybe he should join a circus as a knife-throwing target. Was there really such a job? 

There’d been nary a hint of pain when he’d sprinted upstairs chasing Isabella’s father under the belief that Ernesto was the mastermind. Malcolm would have tackled the old man on the snow-crusted lawn without a fear of broken bones or torn tendons if Gil hadn’t beat him to it. 

They’d all been on a perfect wave, surfing one piece of evidence after another until the revelation that there could be a murder at Calvin Taylor’s high society wedding. 

The sight of Dani decked out in the form-fitting purple sequined gown had quenched all thought of pain. She’d looked like a goddess, biker chick tough combined with the grace of a debutant. He’d donned his own tuxedo without a glance in the mirror, far too accustomed to formal affairs that required penguin suits. Had never given a thought for the damage the sequence of events had done on his recently healed body.

And he hadn’t felt a twinge from the flying leap over the main table at the Taylor wedding to shove George Taylor out of harm’s way. He’d been invincible! Able to leap and run like a decathlon athlete.

Now, with the case closed, everything he’d blithely ignored came crashing in, crushing him like a bug. It hurt to breathe. To think. To move. Which at least displaced the usual mental slideshow of Martin Whitley and John Watkins' reign of horror. 

Malcolm eased his jacket off the left arm, wincing as every abused muscle in his torso and shoulders squealed in protest. It wasn’t just that he’d been completely oblivious to his own mortality; there was his legendary ability to subsume the physical when consumed with his passion.

He clenched his hand, which sometimes alleviated the tremors. The first digit on his left hand joined in the chorus, aching like the proverbial sore thumb that it was. Fracture metacarpal indeed. The jovial orthopedist who’d set and casted his hand after his kidnapping weeks ago had opined that it would probably hurt for the rest of his life. Particularly on cold, snowy days like this one.

“Like breathing out and breathing in…” he murmured, suiting his actions to his words. Getting his jacket off one side was going to have to do for now. 

Because he’d thought of _My Fair Lady,_ now the entire libretto was wafting through his brain. Damn, he’d never sleep with Rex Harrison setting off earworms.  


_I'm a quiet living man, who prefers to spend the evening in the silence of his room,  
who likes an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb._   


Spot on, Henry Higgins.  


“Bright?” 

Gil’s deep, resonate voice sent shivers down Malcolm’s spine to curl around his groin. It was ethereal, a sweet release that could soothe away a great deal. He cocked his head, about as much movement as his neck was going to tolerate, grinning slightly. Gil had collected him from the squadroom once he and Dani vacated the Taylor estate, driving a late model sedan quite unlike the ragtop Pontiac.

Climbing in had been the first glimmer of the agony that was to come. He’d rotated his hips to sit, pain shooting up from pelvis to shoulders, locking up all mobility.

“You’re singing.” Gil handed him a tumbler of smooth whiskey. One ice cube. Gil knew him.

“I don’t sing,” Malcolm protested, easing the tuxedo down the slope of his arm to puddle around his wrist. Every millimeter hurt. 

“My mother loved _My Fair Lady,_ ” Gil said, whisking the jacket away before reaching over to tug Malcolm’s bow tie free of its knot. The shapely piece of silk slithered off his neck, sliding to the floor. “It was probably the background music to my childhood.”

“Not _Desposito_?” Malcolm teased, more at ease with Gil than he was with any other person on earth. His center when all else didn’t hold.

“Not even _La Bamba._ ” Gil gave him that dry, _I-see-right-through you gaze,_ amusement in his voice. “Or _Besame Mucho_.” He gripped Malcolm’s shoulder, bending down. 

The kiss was heavenly. It always was. 

Malcolm breathed heavily through his nose as tongues collided and danced. Calloused fingers dug into the boulder that was Malcolm’s deltoid, creating fossil memories of their connection.

Malcolm yelped in pain, jerking away. “Sorry, sorry—“

Gil flattened his palm, massaging with a gentleness most would not have guessed he possessed. Malcolm wanted to purr like a big cat, able to move his neck a fraction more than before. A step in the right direction. Enough of the whiskey, and he might achieve relaxation.

“Take this off and I’ll give you the Arroyo special discount.” Gil kissed the back of his neck over the warmed up muscles, reaching around to grasp the edges of the shirt.

Breathing in the male scent of him, tweedy jackets, and a whiff of gun oil, Malcolm acquiesced, allowing Gil to undress him.

“Damn, kid,” Gil said abruptly, pressing his hand to Malcolm’s lower back.

Not like he could twist enough to look behind but if Malcolm was a betting man—which he was not-- he would have put a Grant down that Gil was about to cry.

_Impossible._

“And I thought you’d done a number on my car,” Gil said with forced light-heartedness. “You are one massive bruise from neck to hips.”

That explained the pain. “Good to know it’s not all in my head.”

“You didn’t…” Gil trailed off, grabbing his neglected tumbler to take a large slug of whiskey. 

Malcolm closed his eyes, listening to the staccato clinking of ice cubes. “Feel it?” He might have shrugged under other circumstances. “Not when we were in the midst. It’s after…” When the monsters emerged. Wasn’t simply a case of acknowledging his own pain, but that of the girl in the box, and every human being his father had murdered. Enough pain to start a tsunami that would suck him under to drown. “I’ve got awesome coping skills.”

Gil snorted. “You’re delusional.”

“Ordinary enough.” Malcolm let himself lean against Gil’s strong shoulder. Which hurt his wretched muscles and healed some of his inner demons. “Seen you do the same, plow into work to ignore what you can’t change. After Jackie…”

Finishing his drink, Gil rotated the glass enough to keep the ice cubes tinkling melodically. _“I’m an ordinary man,”_ he sing-songed as Rex Harrison had, with a wistful sadness in his dark eyes.

Eyes Malcolm had trusted since they first met when he was a terrified ten year old. Back then, he’d needed someone to trust, to believe in, when all around his was madness. Their relationship had altered after Gil’s wife Jackie died—a time when their roles had reversed and Gil needed a stabilizing force to hold onto.

Slowly--so slowly that Malcolm couldn’t have put his finger on the exact moment if he’d tried—they’d moved into a different dimension, together. Hands connected, hearts already joined had shifted from friendship into romantic love. 

_“Who desires nothing more than just an ordinary chance—_ “ Malcolm sang along to prove he could recall the words. They fit him in ways he’d never previously imagined. 

“Malcolm Bright—ne Whitley—was never ordinary from the day he was born,” Gil commented, smoothing Malcolm’s hair off his forehead. He chuckled. “I seem to remember when you grew this out just to piss off Jessica.”

“It did, too.” Malcolm snickered, swallowing whiskey. The burn down his throat was like fire licking his core. “She said no son of hers was going around looking like Jesus.”

“Perish the thought.” Gil tucked his arm around Malcolm, shifting on the mattress until they were sitting together against the wall. 

_“Hair like Jesus wore it, Hallelujah, I adore it,_ to quote yet another musical truthism,” Malcolm went for levity, his usual default.

“Shifted productions entirely,” Gil said, leaning back with Malcolm in his arms. 

“Who knew you were a musical theatre connoisseur?”

“I’ve seen _Hamilton.”_ Despite the confession, he hummed their song from _My Fair Lady_ in a mellow baritone.

 _“I desire nothing more than just an ordinary chance to live exactly as I want and do precisely as I want…”_ Malcolm quoted to his tune. “Sometimes I wonder if Martin Whitley fucked up any chance of that ever coming true.”

“Kid.” Gil shook his head with sweet exasperation. 

The whiskers of his beard brushed Malcolm’s bare arm, whispery soft and delightfully scratchy. Probably the best sensation Malcolm had felt for more than the last forty-eight hours—not counting Gil’s kisses. 

“You’ve always done precisely what you want since I have known you. Things might have turned out very differently had you done what your father and mother told you to.” 

He’d never considered it from that angle. Like so many of his plans, not thought out in a logical fashion but conceived on the fly while considering so many factors. He was Martin Whitley’s whelp, but not his identical copy. At ten years old, he’d taken a step outside the ordinary and turned his father in. Which lead to meeting Arroyo. What he’d never expected was to fall in love with that man many years later. Societal norms be damned—no, he’d never fit into the square hole his mother wanted him in. Which he would have to accept for the moment because he was dropping with fatigue, his sore body heavy as lead. 

Gil held Malcolm close, the beat of his heart a steady thrum against Malcolm’s shoulder. Strong and calming, a soothing sanctuary. 

Strange how he could go without sleep for days, but snuggled up with Gil and he was undone.

Malcolm closed his eyes, sleep descending. 

FIN


End file.
